Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Operations management writ large

2020; Wiley; Volume: 66; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/joom.1094

1873-1317

Tyson R. Browning,

Operations Management Techniques

Since the beginning, humans have worked, and many have sought to do so more productively. Although one can point to many earlier innovations in management, scientific management has its roots in mechanical engineering in the 1880s from the techniques of Frederick Taylor (Crainer, 2003; Drucker, 1993; Kanigel, 1997; Taylor, 1903, 1911). In a natural progression from Adam Smith (1776) and his predecessors, who observed the benefits of labor specialization, Taylor advocated for the separation of managers (not just supervisors, but planners and schedulers) from other workers, making management a technical discipline. He also sought to increase the productivity of workers and machinery by observing, measuring, and developing theories about the best ways of doing work. Although many of Taylor's specific recommendations have not endured, his scientific approach underlies much of the research output in the management academy, which established a scholarly perspective by the 1920s (the first business journal appeared in 1928) and began to flourish post-World War II. In a development that would not surprise Adam Smith, the management academy subsequently divided into specialized disciplines—such as strategy, leadership, entrepreneurship, marketing, human resources, and information systems—and drew in other relevant ones such as finance and accounting. Along the way, operations management (OM) research occurred under various monikers, including factory management, production management, industrial management, management science, operations research, and decision sciences. 1 To this day, and more so than other management disciplines, OM scholars work in academic departments with highly varied names and participate in a wide variety of professional societies and conferences with diverse emphases and perspectives. Meanwhile, relevant research on managing work has continued in the fields of industrial and mechanical engineering, as well as in engineering management. Over time, conceptions of the scopes and boundaries of these disciplines and nearby fields have evolved. So, what is the scope of the OM discipline now, at the 40th anniversary of the Journal of Operations Management (JOM)? This question is important to consider when determining what topics should fit into JOM, but it is also essential to the community of OM scholars. I suspect that some contemporary conceptions of the scope and extent of OM are too narrow. Herein, I advance a more generous view of OM, one that acknowledges the management of all of the work required to operate an enterprise 2 (and across supply chains)—a work-based view. In his famous book, Taylor (1911) stated that its ambitious purpose was “to show that the fundamental principles of scientific management are applicable to all kinds of human activities, from our simplest individual acts to the work of our great corporations.” Ironically, this pervasive view may have impeded the emergence of OM as a field, because, until the mid-1950s, many still equated OM with “virtually the entire field of industrial management,” and many OM textbooks included chapters on “personnel management, finance, marketing, organization and general management” (Buffa, 1980, p. 1). By 1980, on the first page of the inaugural issue of JOM, Buffa regarded OM as having finally emerged as “a functional field of management.” Ten years later, however, Meredith and Amoako-Gyampah (1990) noticed that many academicians affiliated with OM still had trouble defining its boundaries. As Hayes (2000, p. 105) later remarked, the discipline of OM does not have clear limits, because operations occur everywhere; they “encompass most of the resource-consuming and value-creating activities within a company.” Over the past 40 years, OM has taken on a wider view with respect to areas such as services, behavioral operations, sustainability, and supply chain management (SCM). Many in OM have embraced SCM especially—even though it is not just “within a company”—incorporating it into OM curricula or even rebranding their departments as SCM. Operations and supply chain management (OSCM) has become a common term. While this embrace represents a welcome increase in scope and level of analysis, it has also transferred some momentum and attention away from managing internal operations. How do our teaching materials define the discipline? Let us consider some examples. According to Jacobs and Chase (2017, p. 3), OSCM is “the design, operation, and improvement of the systems that create and deliver the firm's primary products and services,” and it involves acquiring and managing resources. Heizer and Render (2014, p. 4) defined OM as “the set of activities that creates value in the form of goods and services by transforming inputs into outputs.” These definitions include terms like “systems” and “set of activities” that imply processes of doing work—processes that require, transform, and add value to resources. Indeed, the concept of managing work relates closely to that of managing processes, a concept firmly embedded in OM. According to Swink et al. (2017, p. 1), OM “is the management of processes used to design, supply, produce, and deliver valuable goods and services to customers.” And Krajewski et al. (2013, p. 2) stated that OM “refers to the systematic design, direction, and control of processes that transform inputs into services and products for internal, as well as external customers.” Holweg, Davies, De Meyer, Lawson, and Schmenner (2018) advocated well for process theory as foundational to OM. Although OM 3 has expanded its scope since 1980, Hayes (2000) cautioned that OM scholars require focus and must impose limits on their own activities, because they must spend a good deal of their professional time on common ground. In search of a solution, Skinner pragmatically stated that OM is essentially what practicing operations managers care about, and about the challenges they face (Hayes, 2000). So, what do practicing operations managers care about, and what challenges do they face? I expect that there are many things of which I am unaware, but I will highlight two key considerations. First, OM is often represented in executive ranks by a chief operating officer (COO). What does a COO do? Where the COO position exists, this person is often the second-in-command after the chief executive officer (CEO) and in charge of implementing a firm's strategy. This is a large role, even in comparison to other C-level executives, and it spans multiple functional areas. “Often, companies turn responsibility for all areas of operations over to the COO—this typically includes production, marketing and sales, and research and development” (Bennett & Miles, 2006, p. 72). Executing a strategy requires marshaling resources and managing processes across the enterprise and beyond. This is no small role with no shortage of challenges, most of them cross-functional and cross-disciplinary. Does the current scope of OM research cover the full spectrum of these challenges? A second but related consideration pertains to the work and processes within a firm. What if we conceived of a set of processes representing all of the work done in an enterprise? Figure 1 gives a generic example, where the work divides into three categories and a dozen enterprise processes (EPs). Each EP is multifunctional—for example, “Develop Product/Service” properly involves designers, engineers, marketers, financers, accountants, producers, procurers, customer supporters, et al.—so the mapping from EPs to functions is not one-to-one. Figure 1 does not show all of the information and work products flowing among the EPs, although multiple, bilateral flows occur between each, as well as to and from external customers and suppliers. Many companies have their own version of this model, which goes by various names, such as process architecture or enterprise architecture, 4 and gets explained using various metaphors, such as the company genome or operating system. Typically, the COO owns the second leadership process, “Manage Company Operations,” which entails integrating and coordinating all of the other EPs. Whereas some may conceive of a broad definition of OM as encompassing just the “Core Value Processes,” a COO must furthermore ensure that all of the firm's “Enabling Processes” are appropriately integrated into the whole. Indeed, the COO's challenge is to streamline and synchronize the flow of inputs and outputs throughout the company's operating system. With the EPs as the vehicle, the COO drives the company toward its chosen destination (its strategy). The COO is responsible for integrating and coordinating practically all of the work done within the enterprise, and its interactions with external suppliers and customers. The responses have always been along the lines of “who knows?” Clearly, with the scale and complexity of contemporary operations, practicing operations managers face some immense challenges. Addressing them will require taking a larger view of work, its results, and the processes that assimilate them in enterprises. The process perspective is essential, but it could benefit from expanding in at least five ways. First, as discussed above, all EPs—not just “Produce and Distribute Product/Service”—require attention, visibility, integration, coordination, synchronization, management, and improvement. This will require approaching some other disciplines (e.g., marketing, sales, engineering, finance, accounting, information technologies, and human resources) from a work-activity- and work-product-based perspective, to understand the flow of the actions and interactions required to transform valuable inputs into more valuable outputs in their areas. This is not intended to usurp their work or invade their domains, but rather to integrate with it, because that is sorely needed, and who better to do it than us? As Buffa (1980, p. 2) stated, “we have seldom attempted to deal with interfunctional relationships, though I feel that we do this as well or better than our colleagues in other functional disciplines.” JOM's founding editor Lee Krajewski noted, “Thinking of operations management issues from the perspective of their relationships to the entire enterprise saved the field in the 1980s” (Meredith, Krajewski, Hill, & Handfield, 2002, p. 4). We can view OM from a COO's perspective, as the integration, synchronization, and management of most processes across the entire enterprise. Second, some conceive of processes only as formal approaches to be followed, rather than as an objective, observer-independent reality. Processes exist even when they have not been mapped, modeled, or standardized. I tell my students that, in their working careers, if they are ever asked, “Do you have a process for that?,” to always say “yes”—because if work is being done and results are being produced, then there is a way that is happening. That way may not be documented, efficient, effective, or consistent, but it exists. The process is out there. Working processes need to be discovered, described, and understood before they can be improved, controlled, and prescribed. Quite a bit of work is needed merely to describe some of the important activities, practices, processes, and operating systems utilized in diverse organizations. Only then can we begin to sink our teeth into developing better theories about how best to manage them. Third, we need to investigate processes across the full continuum of work, from purely repetitive tasks like mass production to unique, one-time, novel tasks (e.g., some projects). All types of work break down into a network of related activities (i.e., a process) that is supposed to yield a result of value. Yet, I still see some making a false dichotomy between projects and processes. Of course, there are differences. Project processes often entail a flow of information rather than physical components. And project processes should be analyzed differently than repetitive processes—for example, with throughput time (critical path) rather than capacity (bottleneck) as the primary constraint—but both may be modeled as activity networks (Adler, Mandelbaum, Nguyen, & Schwerer, 1995; Browning & Ramasesh, 2007). It would be useful to develop a more unified theory of managing workflows across various kinds of process architectures. Fourth, OM scholars tend to focus on existing, mature, steady-state operational systems. Most give little attention to the genesis of such systems. How should operations begin and grow, from entrepreneurial startups to mature enterprises? What process architectures and operating systems make sense for a small, fast-moving startup; a stable, 50-person business; a growing, 200-person organization; and so on? What does OM contribute to making new ventures more efficient, effective, and likely to succeed? OM scholars could work with entrepreneurship scholars and practitioners to understand the needs, structures, and flows of work at varied scales and evolutionary rates. Fifth, to what extent should the process perspective—indeed, even OM theory—extend toward the “micro” level of individual workers? For example, self-productivity guru David Allen's book Getting Things Done (Allen, 2001) discusses how to manage personal activities, projects, and workflows. Should OM theory guide and inform individual work (and vice versa) as well as companies and supply chains? That was certainly part of Taylor's stated ambition for his 1911 book (q.v., “from our simplest individual acts”), yet much of the research on the management of work at the individual level seems to occur outside of the OM discipline. For these reasons, I see room to expand OM's process perspective in macro and micro directions. I see OM broadly as managing work to produce valuable results. Expanding this a bit, we could state that OM entails managing work, using resources and tools, to produce results (physical or digital products, processes, and/or services), all with particular goals. Each of these items—work, resources/tools, results, and goals—as well as the organizations of people involved—is a kind of system (Browning, Fricke, & Negele, 2006). Figure 2 depicts the situation. OM tends to focus on the process, the system of work actions and interactions (often including the resources and tools employed), but this is merely the nexus of the systems that execute (organizations of people with behaviors), emerge from (result), and guide (goals) that process—all of which are enmeshed in a context/environment. 5 Each of these systems merits the attention of OM scholars, and certainly the implications of the systems' interactions and coevolution would help generate more powerful and integrative theories. We must double down on Chase's (1980, p. 12) admonition to study broader, system-wide issues. (His point at the time was merely to include people as well as equipment, but the intent is easily expanded.) For example, a firm's capabilities to produce particular kinds of results are likely due to appropriate configurations of people, processes, and tools. Improved operations require much more than better, faster workers and equipment, because how activities and resources are organized and managed makes a huge difference (Schmenner, 2015). 6 We must consider operations as complex, multilayered networks of processes connected to people, tools, results, goals, and contexts—sometimes with decentralized controls—and even facilities, firms, alliances, and industries. Opportunities abound to apply OM theory—and to enhance it—in realms such as ride-sharing systems, gig economy operations, electrical and other utilities, customer-codeveloped and bespoke products/services, and increasingly automated services that incorporate expanding amounts of artificial intelligence (AI). Research across such areas will require working with other disciplines, including management, information systems, engineering, and so forth. Whether everyone in OM views that as an attractive prospect or not, the fact is that important topics will be addressed with or without us. For example, why should studies of COOs be done only by strategic management scholars (e.g., Hambrick & Cannella, 2004) rather than OM scholars? Top-notch OM research often appears outside the core OM journals—for example, Sinha and Van de Ven's (2005) study of work design. Organization science, industrial policy, and other areas of management are exploring tasks, routines, processes, time management, productivity, innovation, project management, knowledge management, organizational capabilities, and many other such topics that lie well within the purview of OM. Much of the data from contemporary organizations exists in “big data” repositories, and information systems scholars may be doing a better job of discovering useful insights about OM issues from these data. Hayes (2000, p. 109) warned that the discipline of OM needs to confront a growing threat, that people outside the field of OM “are doing research—without our participation—on many of the topics we have traditionally considered our domain.” His proposed solution was more interdepartmental collaboration. If COOs must integrate EPs across functions in companies, can we do the same in our own institutions? Can we achieve real integration of our management theories, rather than merely enjoying a false sense of sharing while actually talking past each other (Davies, Manning, & Söderlund, 2018)? OM scholars should take the lead on effective, interdepartmental collaboration. But how far can we go? What should our grounding and guiding focus be? Is “Does a practicing operations manager care about this?” enough of a litmus test—especially when so many practitioners are too busy to care about some things that they should? I submit that we can enlarge our view of OM while maintaining focus on the management of work, a work-based view. Work occurs in processes, which—although widely and rightly acknowledged as a core aspect of OM—can be considered more broadly, as discussed earlier. 7 A process should provide a result of value to its stakeholders. Whether and how to emphasize improvements in process efficiency, effectiveness, and/or consistency depends on the aspects of value in a particular situation (on which the stakeholders might not agree). Operational excellence entails increasing the value provided by an enterprise's processes—surely the purpose and goal of any good manager. After a couple of decades of OM fixation on the methods of operations research, 8 the founding of JOM called for putting the “management” back into OM (Buffa, 1980, p. 3). Now we should expand our view of the “operations”—the work to be managed—as well. The nature of work continues to evolve, as more and more contemporary operations involve so-called knowledge work. According to Drucker (1993, p. 42), “In fact, knowledge is the only meaningful resource today. The traditional ‘factors of production’ have not disappeared, but they have become secondary.” He goes on to state that our 21st-century challenge is to increase the efficiency of knowledge work. This fits in well with the concept of processes and information flow. Just as automation has transformed production processes over the past century, AI will most likely transform knowledge work processes over the course of this century. These realities bring a myriad of research questions. For example, as with factory automation, will AI implementations proceed too quickly, as showpieces, while their actual contributions to process improvement are a mirage? Will AI-infused processes overemphasize efficiency at the expense of flexibility and adaptability? How do latent connections and relationships in workflows affect performance? How should the work of a distributed, remote workforce (such as the one suddenly magnified by the recent corona virus pandemic) be understood, integrated, synchronized, and managed for efficiency, effectiveness, and consistency? What innovations are occurring in knowledge work design? Answers to these types of questions fall well within a broad view of OM—one that includes areas such as process knowledge management—and will be directly relevant to practicing COOs and operations managers. With this broad conception of OM as managing work to produce valuable results, what aspects of management are not OM? Pragmatically, we cannot reverse the century of divarication in the management academy; we would be wise to avoid encroaching on the core foci of the other major departments in business schools. While we want to engage in integrative research, it could focus on how work flows to and from the activities in strategy, marketing, sales, human resources, finance, accounting, IT, and so forth—rather than on how those activities themselves occur (although OM theory might provide useful insights on the efficiency, effectiveness, and consistency of such work). Like a COO (or the equivalent role in a public or nonprofit entity), OM researchers might focus more on how all the pieces of an enterprise fit together rather than on the pieces themselves (except, of course, pieces such as development, production, distribution, and SCM). What work products and results do various activities contribute to an enterprise, and what attributes make them more or less valuable? Without stepping on others' toes, we might catalyze improved integration not only in enterprises but perhaps in the academy as well. How do organizations and supply chains operate? How do they work? And how does this understanding lead to better management? I have defined OM broadly as managing work to produce valuable results. The point of this essay is not to advocate for taking Taylor's or any others' ideas about scientific management to the extreme. Nor am I suggesting an OM uber alles perspective where anything and everything fits. Merely managing work is not the totality of effective management: There is still plenty of room for our sister disciplines in the academy to make their contributions. But work is everywhere, and opportunities to “do it better” abound within and across every individual, department, organization (public or private, for-profit or not), and supply chain. Almost all managers must answer basic questions that boil down to: What work should be done? Why is it worth doing? What should its result be? How to do it? Where to do it? Who or what should do it? When should it start and finish? How do we get what we need to do it? Today, the world faces many resource constraints, wherein the efficient and effective use of resources to accomplish appropriate results becomes even more important. 9 Meanwhile, we face the prospect of automation and AI replacing ever-greater portions of both manual and knowledge-based tasks. But efficiency and productivity must not be allowed to become ends in themselves. Their competitive advantage provides benefits to some while threatening others. It is essential to consider not just their effects on profitability and worker and manager behaviors but also their appropriate place in subordination to ethics, morality, and respect for people. This will require connections to history (e.g., Schmenner, 2015; Singhal et al., 2007; Sprague, 2007), philosophy, and broader views of stakeholder value. Indeed, OM is a lot more than merely producing widgets, serving customers, and managing suppliers. OM is an exciting discipline with no shortage of crucial, relevant, and impactful challenges to address. Doing so will require integrating across other management disciplines in a more holistic way, and taking on more of the enterprise-wide concerns of a COO. The goal of this essay is to get our community to think more broadly about the challenges and opportunities. A work-based view gives breadth and focus to these endeavors. When it comes to getting complex things done—in an efficient, effective, consistent, organized, and value-producing way—there is no better approach than OM… writ large.